Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Family, especially extended family, tends to suffer from a fleeting shelf life of three days, with each additional hour a window of opportunity for wholly justifiable homicide. A single breakfast together isn’t so bad, however, though I will freely admit to RSVPing to this past Saturday’s gathering with a “maybe” initially, citing golf of all things as a potential excuse from the festivities. Yes, golf. Holy Aunt Jemima alive! In the end, I decided the Pancake House would be more tolerable, even after pulling up to it and discovering, much to my disappointment, the House was made of brick instead of cake.

The choice made economic sense. I mean, you’ve got free food on one hand and green fees on the other. It was also a chance to be normal. I’ve found it’s far easier to be introspective during times like these–the Great Recession, so deemed by current parlance–rather than boom times. Maybe it’s because the latter ceaselessly bears you to the next big thing, beat by beat, from plasma TV to car to promotion, whereas this era calls attention to what is, which in this case was a pancake-fueled shot at normalcy.

And normal it certainly was, where for more than an hour I remade myself into the person I knew I should want to be: genial, collected, freely dispensing both hugs and talk, drawn to society. My granduncle inquired at one point why, despite only living half an hour away from them, I’ve only visited once, and the truthful answers flashed across my mind: because interacting with people triple my age simply doesn’t interest me, or because I can be an apathetic bastard, or because there’s a hard limit to my capacity for familial obligation.

“It’s just been so busy,” I replied.

It was partly correct and mostly a white lie, one of those untruths we offer to preserve the bonds of cordiality. I was content with leaving it at that because sharing the same family tree isn’t enough. There needs to be more, right? When ties are based solely on blood, there seems to be a very real chance of having them clot and scab over.